Sunday, 14 July 2013

Maelstrom

MAELSTROM

Alexander Scott

Reviewed by Mark Lain

Puffin’s Adventure Gamebooks series included this
one-off full RPG rulebook set roughly from the 15th to 17th
Centuries (although the system is freely adaptable for any historical era) which,
whilst not particularly well-known when published in the early 80s, has
developed something of a cult following in recent years with a re-release plus various
add-on modules and adventure scenarios published by Arion Games from 2008
onwards.

In an era when
RPGs were quite expensive (I remember each of the Dungeons & Dragons Rule Sets costing £9.99 each in the mid-80s),
not to mention requiring multiple purchases of expansion sets to continue games
into higher levels, an entire RPG in one single book was a very good idea, even
though you needed to invest in some specialist dice (and some
miniatures/environments should you wish to add a visual element) etc to be able
to play this, but dice were hardly going to break the bank and if you were into
role-play chances were that you already had some anyway. But this is a
different approach to RPGs from the usual monsters, dragons, treasure, etc of
most game systems, in that it is a historical game set in the real world (medieval
England is presented in the book, but the system is usable in any country)
where you assume historically-accurate characters from nobles, through priests,
rogues, thieves and assassins, various types of traders and craftsmen,
travelling players, etc and you must behave appropriately to your chosen
character type. There is scope to also be a mage in conjunction with another trade
as, given the superstitions of the era, publicly using magic would be pretty
suicidal, so you have to be under cover.

The way
characterisation is handled in this game is both a massive success and a big problem
in that it would be hard to play a character accurately and also get something
out of the experience if the player was not actively interested in the history
of the era and, probably more so, have at least a passing knowledge of the
period. Indeed, to referee this game would require a fairly in-depth knowledge
of the period of play, otherwise adventures would either be fairly dull and
one-dimensional, or factual gaps would be filled with impossible fantasy elements
that could annoy the players who want to play a historical game, as opposed to
an all-out fantasy game. In many ways, this is almost the sit-down table-top
version of things like the Sealed Knot and similar battle recreation groups that,
again, make no sense unless you are very into the history you are re-enacting
and know plenty about it to understand the motives and ideas behind what you
are doing. For a group of keen historians, this RPG system is probably the most
in-depth and realistic of any RPG I have ever seen. Character types follow
strict rules of behaviour and approach, and many stats exist to determine
success or failure. For example, should a priest wish to escape a situation by
preaching to his assailants, a saving throw is made against his Persuasion stat
to determine if his preaching has had the desired effect. The game mechanics
are largely based around similar saving throws being made against various other
realistic stats with the added possibility of critical successes or failures
with either over-the-top or disastrous results – again, this is very realistic.
The combat system is equally realistic, allowing for modifiers based on weapon
used, combat prowess, armour (and whether the body part hit is covered with
any), etc which is way beyond what many systems can cater for. Likewise,
unconsciousness, exhaustion, loss of limbs, and the amount of time wounds take
to heal are also taken into account (including the option for months of bed
rest making wounds heal faster, but that would hardly make for a fun adventure).
On the one hand, the sheer number of saving throws involved in this game can make
it seem that all you ever do is make saving throws, but it is balanced out against
creating a very real feel to the game. As with traditional RPGs in the D&D vein, Experience Points are
gained allowing characters to develop over time, rather than existing for a
moment in time that lasts as long as the adventure in hand (as with FF) which can be unsatisfying and remove
the feeling of “being” a character. Age also comes into play, along with
periods of training/apprenticeship, meaning aspects of slowing over time etc can
be incorporated, as well as limits being set on stat levels dependant on age,
plus older characters are more vulnerable to disease. Again, this is very
realistic.

Disease and
its cures are incorporated in the context of the era the game is set in. In
other words, various quack medicines and herbal remedies (some still correct eg
poisons and some discredited centuries ago) play a large role in treating both
disease and wounds. Again, this is made as realistic as possible, with seasonal
variations on availability and price of herbs from sellers, as well as variant
effects (eg coma or madness if not used correctly), plus the added element of
particular remedies rocketing in price in times of heavy demand (and epidemics
were pretty common in the eras of the game, so this is a nice touch as well.)
The herblore appendix is based on an actual treatise on the subject from the
era, making it as realistic and as contextually arcane as is possible and there’s
every chance that this has had more than a passing influence on the herblore that
plays a large role in FF #53 Spellbreaker,
as there are definite similarities.

Putting the era
of play into context is key in the successful design of this system, be it
through the medical theories of the time, the inclusion of town guilds/reputations
and the like to direct how character professions can or cannot behave, the
influence of religion and superstition (priests can be either very powerful or
hunted down as heretics depending on the pervasive view at any one time), and
beliefs in such things as magic (the use of which can be lethal) and such fantasy
beings as changelings, witches, fairies, etc. Again, the supernatural is
handled very well and it is possible to actually warp reality when casting dangerous
spells (the Maelstrom of the title) with various unpredictable results.

Magic is an
interesting aspect of this system as no list of spells is included as would
normally be expected, the idea being that anything is possible by using magic
(again, very in keeping with the beliefs of the era.) The referee is left to
judge on the achievability level of a spell that a player may wish to cast and
then determine whether they are a) experienced enough to cast it, and b) what
the outcome is. Basic things like use of the equivalent of Jedi mind tricks are
not too difficult (especially as many people in the era would probably be easy
to fool into believing just about anything anyway), whilst inconceivable things
(which were of course perfectly conceivable at the time) such as raising the
dead, changing the weather, flying, etc are much harder and therefore unlikely
to be pulled-off by anyone other than very experienced characters (again, more
realism, which balances the era’s fantasy that these things were fact with the reality
that they were not.)

Whilst this
system is exceptionally well-designed and therefore as realistic as it could
get without making it so reliant on dice-rolling and planning that you would
never be playing anything and having any fun, the option for adventuring seems
a little limited to either daily activities (if the everyday professions such
as traders or people who make things are used) or acting out actual historical
events, some of which would be far more interesting than others, of course –
court intrigue, whilst well-documented and it makes good TV drama may not be
very exciting to play, but witch-hunting or assassination is probably quite fun,
if a bit repetitive after a while. This is where I maintain that this game is
best enjoyed by those with an active interest in and knowledge of the era of
play. Understanding the motives of an adventurer in a regular RPG is easy
enough as time and place are purely conceptual, but thinking like a real
historical character type in a particular century is much harder unless you
understand what made people tick at the time. To make it easier to envisage how
to play this game, two sample adventures are included. The first is a standard
move from one section to another solo scenario of 160 paragraphs helpfully entitled
A Solo Adventure (that seems to be
the blue-print for FF #29 Midnight Rogue)
where you are hired as an assassin to sneak into a rich merchant’s house and poison
him. It all turns out to be a big ruse to prove your worthiness just like in Midnight Rogue and there are even
unreachable paragraphs to prevent cheating just like in that book, plus trying
to play with anything other than an assassin results in you immediately
arriving home and nothing happening, followed by being instructed to actually
roll-up an ASSASSIN this time! Other than meeting a few NPCs, finding various keys,
and getting caught in the rain/mud in a maze, there isn’t really much to do,
but the atmosphere of night-time, mystery (and rain) are all laid-on thick and
this is a fun, if short, introduction to how to handle one of the more playable
and potential-filled character types. The inclusion of a lot of unreachable
paragraphs (and several “you are an idiot”-type instant failure sections) makes
it seem like there’s more to this than there is, but it’s still a nice
introduction and is a good way of filling a spare half-hour or so. Further into
the book, we get the second adventure, imaginatively named An Adventure, which is a full multi-player RPG scenario and much
more representative of how Maelstrom
is intended to be played – there is a lot of travelling, a lot of incidental
encounters with everyday life, plus a few bits of skulduggery (as would be
expected in the era) to give you something to actually adventure through. In
some ways, it’s a sort of Canterbury
Tales affair where a mixed-bag of character types (all with different
motives) are travelling together through Hertfordshire to London. The main aim
is that of several of the players who are taking someone to London to hand him
over to the authorities (which gives the referee a NPC to play throughout as
well.) Various minor things happen along the way, but nothing that has the “meat”
of a fantasy adventure, which, again, gives the impression that history buffs
would get more out of this system than traditional fantasy gamers.

Both playing
and refereeing this game would be quite demanding (until you are used to the more
commonly-used rules) and the first read-through of the book can leave your head
spinning, especially the optional Advanced Rules that are mind-boggling in
places, but that, again, do add much-needed realism and depth. Oddly though,
two aspects of life are conspicuous by their absence – no mention is made of
firearms which were very common at the time, especially flintlock pistols and field
cannons (and siege weapons if you are playing in an earlier Medieval period),
and animals are similarly absent which is a bigger surprise considering that
characters will often have horses and dogs were very common pets/guards.
Likewise, cats were witches’ familiars and, whilst it specifically states that
you cannot play a witch, these would be common as NPCs. The latter problem was
resolved by a supplementary article on animals included in Warlock #6 covering real and mythical creatures (as many fantasy
animals such as satyrs, unicorns, dragons, etc were still believed to exist)
for inclusion in Maelstrom games.
Firearms (gunpowder weapons) were finally added by Arion Games in 2008 in their
161-page expansion book The Maelstrom
Companion, along with the less noticeable, but still very setting-pertinent,
omitted subject of alchemy, meaning that pretty much everything you’d need to
know for the era to be complete was now included. It does state in the original
rule book being reviewed here that it is up to the referee to add or remove
rules and ideas as they see fit, so there’s no reason why these missing
elements couldn’t just be added anyway (it often refers to the need to write
your own rules into the rule book itself), although gauging the equivalent damage
done by ballistics compared to a sword may not be particularly simple and is easy
to over- or under-estimate, given that a miss-hit from a sword can cause a
minor graze, whereas a cannon ball explosion will at least maim if not almost
always kill outright. Perhaps firearms were excluded because they are so
dangerous and were often very unpredictable to even use at the time, the user
being as likely to be killed by a backfire as the intended target would be of
being hit.

Arion Games,
as part of their 2007 resurrection of the Maelstrom
concept helped to address the question of just how to go about creating
interesting enough adventures to use this system, by producing several add-on
adventure/concept modules (like D&D
did umpteen times) covering topics such as tournaments, beggars (which would
never be simple to write a “mission” for as such), taverns, a more fleshed-out
road trip like An Adventure but more
interesting, and an investigative mystery adventure scenario. These make the
system go much further as we now have a superbly designed historical game
system that also has scope for playability beyond the abilities of a referee to
extract enough material from real history without straying into standard fantasy
RPG territory that would not fit in.

To summarise,
this is as realistic as a RPG can get without becoming over-reliant on
dice-throwing or so complex that no-one can understand it (and it’s certainly pretty
complicated as it stands!) History buffs and/or those with a decent understanding
of the era being played in would benefit much more than a casual gamer or fantasy RPG fan, but there’s no reason why, given an exciting and varied enough
adventure (that doesn’t stretch the boundaries of reality beyond what was
understood to be “fact” at the time, of course), that this could not be enjoyed
either way. If you ignore the often baffling rules and bombardment of
instructions about saving throws and stat adjustment and just read this as a
book, this makes an excellent insight into how the era in question functioned
both socially and structurally and Alexander Scott is to be congratulated for
the sheer depth of research and information that has gone into creating this
RPG. Just how playable it really is I’m not certain, but it is definitely a
fully fleshed-out system that attempts to do something different by applying
role-playing to the real world.

3 comments:

Nice review! This is actually one of the most insightful reviews of the game i have ever read.

You may or may not be aware that we have just finished a Kickstarter for a sort of 2nd Ed of Maelstrom (Maelstrom Domesday) that both tightens up the mechanics somewhat and although it shifts a few hundred years back in time, will also provide a players guide to the setting.

The original game was as you said very sandboxy, with no clear type of adventure. The new version will have a stated play style, but it is of course easy to ignore that if required.